The issue of global warming continues to be a fault line in this country and across the world. There are, on the one hand, those who believe, like Al Gore, that the earth is warming to a catastrophic degree, that it is caused by man’s overuse of carbon-based energy, and if we don’t hurry and do something about it we will face the melting of glaciers and ice sheets, biblical flooding, and increased tornadoes and hurricanes. Their holy grail is the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which they cite as confirmation of their theories.

In a recent interview with Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), we discussed his recent book, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, in which he documents his personal journey of discovery on this issue—from his early days in politics, as the mayor of Tulsa, to his time as a congressman—from his years in the insurance and oil businesses, and seeing firsthand the heavy hand of the federal government.

In what way is global warming a hoax? Inhofe said, “…I’m talking about MoveOn.org, George Soros, Michael Moore, the Al Gore Hollywood elites, and all that. These are people who really want to believe this, and they have unlimited funds that they pour into campaigns. They brag about having ‘defeated’ people, that they’re able to do, and that’s how they got so much political power. That is where the hoax comes in, because they’re perpetrating a hoax, and that hoax is that catastrophic global warming is taking place in the world now, and it’s due to manmade gases—CO2, carbon, methane, that type of thing—and what they want to do is just shut down this machine called America.”